Photo Gallery: Read Montague at TEDGlobal

Read Montague speaks at TEDGlobal 2012

By James Duncan Davidson

During his TEDGlobal talk, Read Montague described hyperscanning, a technique he invented that enables research subjects in different brain scanners to interact in real time, whether across rooms or across continents.

"We can synchronize these machines anywhere in the world, set people into these staged social interactions, and eavesdrop on both the interacting brains," Montague said. "So for the first time we don’t have to look at just averages for single individuals, or have individuals playing computer games, or try to make inferences that way. … We can study the way one person interacts with another person, turn the numbers up, and start to gain new insights into the boundaries of normal cognition. But more importantly, we can put people with classically defined mental illnesses or brain damage into these social interactions and use these [interactions] as probes."

Read Montague speaks at TEDGlobal 2012

By James Duncan Davidson

"The same dopamine system that gets you addicted to drugs, that makes you freeze when you get Parkinson’s disease, that contributes to various forms of psychosis is also redeployed to value interactions with people and assign valuation to gestures you do when you’re interacting with someone else," Read Montague said. "You bring to the table such enormous processing power in this domain you that you hardly even notice it." Montague went on to use a series of photos—first of a baby, then of people interacting with one another—to illustrate his point.

Read Montague at TEDGlobal 2012

By James Duncan Davidson

Read Montague contends that using people with good mental health as coal-mine-dwelling canaries may be a promising avenue for capturing the subtle behavioral hallmarks of mental illness.

Read Montague speaks at TEDGlobal 2012

“We all have a behavioral superpower in our brain,” Read Montague said. “We can deny every instinct we have for survival for an idea—for a mere idea. No other species can do that.”

Montague used as an example the cult Heaven’s Gate, whose members committed mass suicide in 1997 in their quest to reach an alien spacecraft they believed to be trailing the Comet Hale-Bopp.

“It was an incredibly tragic event,” Montague said. “But the point here is they were able to deny their instincts for survival using exactly the same systems that were put there to make them survive.”

Those systems are deep in the brain and involve dopamine, a neurotransmitter, Montague said, “that makes us chase sex, food, and salt – that keeps us alive.” Dopamine drives valuation mechanisms in the brain, allowing us to navigate our world, whether foraging for berries or interacting in a complex social exchange.

Michael Friedlander introduces the simulcast

By Amanda Mullins

Read Montague has long worked to bring mathematics and computation to mental health, said Michael Friedlander, executive director of Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute, in introducing a simulcast of the TEDGlobal talk in Roanoke.

“Read’s use of rigorous, computationally based analysis of brain function and his invention of hyperscan technology have led to the development of a new field, computational psychiatry, which has been shaking up the world of psychiatry,” Friedlander told an audience primarily composed of the faculty, staff, students, and friends of both the research institute and the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine. “It has already led to tremendous, exciting new insights into a range of psychiatric disorders, such as autism spectrum disorders, borderline personality disorder, and addiction.”

The Roanoke audience responds to the simulcast

By Amanda Mullins

After the Roanoke simulcast of Read Montague's talk, several members of his laboratory gathered in a hallway to review highlights of his talk. At one point the discussion became so animated that one of the neuroscientists turned to a passerby and sheepishly explained, “This is the closest science ever comes to having a rock concert!”

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Read Montague directs the Computational Psychiatry Unit, the Human Neuroimaging Laboratory, and the Roanoke Brain Study, all at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute.